Children of the Enemy

by Steven DeBonis

  My children are very good, they listen to me. My daughter, she worked in Vietnam, she helped some people [as a maid] in their house. My boy, he’s number one son. He work building houses, made good money. When I go to jail, they go to work and make money.

  The VC always talk bad to me, they tell me, “You have two American boyfriends.” They talk about me everywhere. One night in 1975, I was sleeping, and they come knocking on my door at 2 A.M.

  They yell, “Open the door.” I don’t open the door, I hide. I be afraid for my children, they are very young then. Years later, when they [the VC] talk bad to me, tell me, “You are the wife of an American,” I don’t listen to them. So many people call me that, you know, that I don’t even pay attention. I tell the VC, “VC, you know, I been four times in jail, five times in jail, and now I’m not scared of nothing.” And that’s when I made the paper to leave Vietnam with my children.

  Here in the PRPC, me and my children, we get along very good. They listen to me. Now they be in school, I cook, and they come back and eat. Then I go to school, and when I come back, they cleaned the house, washed the clothes, and got water. Yesterday, my son, he had a headache, he wanted to stay home from school. I say, “No, you must go. Be careful, if you are absent too much, you won’t go to America.”

  My family is going to North Carolina, but we don’t know our sponsor. I want to work when I get to America, I’ll do anything. You know, in Vietnam I raised piglets and sold them. I can do many things. I’m not scared of going to America, I’m not scared of nothing.”

  Thanh

  “The UPI tells me my husband was taken by Cambodian soldiers.”

  I am struck by Linda’s appearance. With her thick wavy hair and liquid brown eyes, she seems almost Brazilian. In explanation of her daughter’s Latin features, Thanh, Linda’s mother, tells me, “Her father was American, but his family came from Portugal.”

  We are sitting in Thanh’s billet, as her family wanders in and out. She has five grown children, three of them Amerasian. Thanh’s former husband, Terry Reynolds, had come to Vietnam as a soldier, and became a freelance journalist after his tour of duty. Thank shows me a letter of recommendation written by Colonel Altman for Reynolds. It extols his excellence in the battlefield and as a writer and mentions that Reynolds could be found, especially after the Tet offensive, in orphanages and hospitals, donating soap and other items that he had purchased with his own money. Thank also produces a document from United Press International describing the incident in which her husband was abducted by Communist forces in Cambodia while on assignment, never to be heard from again.

  Thanh, fifty-three, was born in North Vietnam, fifteen kilometers from the China border. She moved to Hanoi with her aunt when she was three and to Saigon in 1954. Although she speaks to me in English, Thanh occasionally enters into a Vietnamese discussion with my interpreter, who then gives a translation.

  MY AUNT HAD three or four houses for rent on Truong Minh Giang Street in Saigon. An American came and rented one. I saw him many times; he came into my store. Soon we fell in love, we were both about twenty-three. We live together and I have a son. My aunt gets very angry and fights with me, so we go away to a different house. After two or three years she finds me, and I go back there with my husband.

  Terry was in the army, but after that he became a reporter. I worry about him, that he will get killed. Saigon has many troubles, and he goes out every day. Many times he goes on the aircraft carriers. He goes for four or five days and comes back, then two weeks later he goes again. And sometimes he goes to Cambodia.

  Thanh, family and friends inside her billet in the PRPC; Thanh is second from left, Linda is second from the right in the second row, her brother next to her.

  Vietnamese people look at me very bad when I stay with an American. My husband knows about that, but he don’t care. He comes home and reads a book, eats, sleeps. He don’t talk to nobody. My husband don’t like Vietnamese food, so I learn to cook American food.

  He says to me to get married and go to America with him. I say I don’t go, and we stay together in Saigon. Finally, he tells me that if we don’t get married, and something happens to him, my baby won’t get nothing. So, after seven years, we get married, and then he gets lost.

  It happened in Cambodia, in 1972. He was abducted by Cambodian Communist soldiers. One Australian woman, one American, and two Vietnamese men come to my house and tell me. One girl, she’s Korean, she works at UPI too, she tells me to stay home, and she goes to Cambodia [to look for him]. In three days she comes back. One Cambodian man saw him, and told her he’s still alive. One or two weeks I hear about him, then I don’t hear no more.

  I ask Hanoi [for help], but they don’t answer to me. I want to go to Cambodia, but I am afraid because the Cambodian people, they kill the Vietnamese. I don’t know what to do. What can I do? I just stay home and wait for my husband.

  Linda and Thanh in the PRPC market

  When I go to America, I want to find my husband’s mother. She is angry at me because he got killed. She blames me. She told her son he would have problems if he married a Vietnamese girl. I wrote her a letter, but she never answered. I want to see her, to make amends.

  The UPI tells me my husband was taken by Cambodian soldiers. They say that after six months, if there is no word, they pay me six months’ salary. UPI says he works as a freelancer, so they don’t want to pay more. So I wait, and then they pay me two hundred dollars every month for six months. I had to sign a paper to guarantee that when my son get old, he don’t make no trouble [file further claims]. I have babies, I don’t have money, so I have to do that, but then I hire a lawyer to try to get my husband’s insurance. He tells me that if I didn’t accept the six months’ salary, maybe we could do something, but since I got that already . . . [He couldn’t help her].

  I thought maybe the army would give me some money. My husband was in the army seven years, but they don’t give me anything. One or two months after my husband got killed, the Americans left Vietnam and went home.

  In 1975, I ask UPI for a loan of two hundred dollars, to help me take care of my children. They gave me one hundred dollars, and they say the next day they give me more. That night there was a lot of trouble. The next day, the VC came to Saigon.

  Anh

  “Linh’s father was not my husband. I was raped.”

  Anh and I first met in neighborhood four of the PRPC on a scorching day in February. I had come from teaching a class; she was attempting to find an agency that would provide her with some clothes. Anh was eight months pregnant, and her own worn clothes were woefully small. Clothing is for sale at the camp market, but shopping requires funds, something that Anh, with seven children at home, was perpetually short of She approached me, asking in near fluent English for ADRA [the Adventist Development and Relief Agency], where she had heard that used clothing was available. With the help of some neighborhood children, we located ADRA, but they had already closed their doors for the day. Anh and I walked back to her billet. In front of the entrance, several of her children were playing the Vietnamese equivalent of jacks, using chopsticks and a rubber ball. Her husband was poring over an English textbook. Shortly after we arrived, Linh, Anh’s black Amerasian daughter, walked in. Anh stiffened immediately, the tension between them was palpable.

  A month later, Anh came to see me in my office. She had given birth to a daughter and invited me to come by and see the newborn girl. As we walked to my car, she began to talk about her daughter Linh. “You know, she said, “Link’s father was not my husband. I was raped, that’s how I got her, and that’s why I never loved her as much as my other children. ”

  MY FATHER DIED when I was still a young girl, and my mother sent me away to a Catholic school outside of Saigon. That place was my home for about eight years. When I was about twelve, I went back to my village near Phuoc Vinh and continued my schooling there.

  When the U.S. army came to Vietnam, I studied English, and I got a job at the U.S.
army base in Quy Nhon. I brought my mother up there to live with me. I started as a waitress at the open mess, but after two months they saw that I could speak English well, I could read and write, so they sent me to be a secretary. I was about eighteen at this time.

  A black GI used to give me a ride to work and drop me off near my house at the end of the day. One day there was a very heavy rain. I could not get out of the car to walk home. He said that he would take me back to the office and I could watch TV until the rain stopped, then he would take me home. I told him that I didn’t want to go because it was already late and my mother would be worried, but he insisted. He didn’t go back in the direction of the office. He turned into an isolated area, and he raped me in the car. Then he drove me home. I was crying and miserable, a young girl, a virgin.

  The next morning he came to pick me up to take me to go to work. I wouldn’t get into the car. He apologized for what he did, but I would not go with him. After that I didn’t see him anymore. His time in Vietnam was up, and he went back to the United States. I didn’t know then that I was pregnant.

  Rape is a terrible shame for a girl in Vietnam. I couldn’t tell anyone what happened, not even my mother. Finally, when she saw that I was pregnant, I told her what happened. She was furious, she blamed me. She beat me and sent me away to a church in Saigon, where they took care of me.

  After my baby was born, I moved back to my village in Phuoc Vinh, but people there looked at me bad because I had been with a foreign man. That’s why I had to go away. I went to Long An and got a job on the army base there, again as a secretary. But a few months later, the U.S. army was leaving Vietnam, and I had no more job.

  I went back to my village, and I got a job as an elementary school teacher. In 1974, I married a Vietnamese soldier and moved back to Quy Nhon, where we stayed with his family. My mother took care of Linh, my Amerasian daughter. I didn’t tell my husband that she was my child. A Vietnamese man doesn’t want a woman who has an American baby.

  The next year the VC came. They made it very difficult to find a job. You could only be a farmer or a housewife, something like that. So we were farmers. My husband worked in the fields, and I took care of our children. We lived with his family. We had no money for food or for anything. We were broke. That same year the VC took my husband away, but they would not tell me where. Later, I found out they killed him.

  In 1978 I married again. This husband is here with me now. He is also from Quy Nhon, and we lived with his family there. I told him that my Amerasian daughter was really my mother’s godchild, and not my daughter. In Vietnam it is common for a child to live with her godmother, so he believed me. If you tell a Vietnamese man that you have an Amerasian child, he will think you are bad and will not marry you.

  By 1983 we had two babies. Money was a problem, my husband’s family could no longer afford to feed us. I went back to my mother’s house in Phuoc Vinh with my babies, and my husband stayed in Quynhon. You know, my husband is younger than me, and my mother never liked him. She kept on telling me, “Your husband is much younger and more beautiful than you. He will not take care of you forever. You must leave him.”

  A few months later my husband’s grandmother died and left him a little gold. He came down to Phuoc Vinh to stay with me, but he could not stand my mother, so he used his inheritance to buy a small house there in Phuoc Vinh. My mother was still trying to break us up. Finally, she told him that Linh was really my daughter, not her godchild. She figured that if he knew I had an Amerasian daughter, he wouldn’t want me anymore.

  So now my husband tried to find out the truth. He asked me so many times, “Is Linh your daughter or not?” I tried to hide it. I didn’t want him to find out because in Vietnam when somebody knows about that, it’s very bad. One night he was asking me again, over and over. “How will you feel if I tell you that she is my daughter?” I asked him. He said, “Go ahead, let me know.” So, I told him. He almost cried when he found out. He wanted to know, but when he knew he almost cried.

  Anh’s husband speaks: When I knew Linh was her daughter, I was very sad because if you have a good family you can’t have an Amerasian. In Vietnam, many people think it’s bad when a woman has an Amerasian child, that she hasn’t a good heart.

  Anh: You know, my husband treats Linh well, better than me. I was raped by her father, so I never loved her as much as I loved my other children. Sometimes I would get angry at her, but my husband would say, “You cannot act like that. You must be good to your daughter.”

  Linh always stayed with my mother, and my mother loves her very much. She stopped school after two years. You know, the Vietnamese children do not like that color skin, black. They teased her so much, and she wouldn’t go back.

  In 1983, I heard about the Amerasian program, that Amerasians and their families could go to America. The government didn’t tell us anything about it. A friend mentioned it to me, and then I heard about it on the radio, on the BBC. When I went to make the papers, the officials asked, “Who told you about this?” and things like that. They didn’t want people to leave Vietnam. They would make us stay there forever.

  I made the application and left it with them. I waited four years until they called me, and then they made me come five or six times. Each time it was the same, I had to give them bribes, some money or cigarettes. I had just given birth, and I had to take my baby daughter on the bus with me each time I went there. It was very tiring. And they made us wait three more years to get out of Vietnam. They didn’t let us leave until 1990.

  I never tried to escape by boat because it was so expensive. You have to pay thirty gold rings to the captain. If you have a hundred dollars, you can buy two gold rings, and for one person you have to pay thirty rings. I had so many people in my house, how could I go by boat?

  Since I came here to the PRPC, I have had problems with my Amer-asian daughter. She is always going around, she don’t like to stay home. She says that she should have come here with another family and gotten money. You know, in Vietnam if you want to go to the United States you can pay money to an Amerasian child [to say that she is your child]. She is very angry at me because I don’t have any money.

  Before the Amerasian program, it was difficult for the Amerasians in Vietnam, especially the black Amerasians like my daughter. The Vietnamese don’t like that color skin. But since the Amerasian program, now that people know that if they have an Amerasian child they can go to America, the attitude towards Amerasians is different. Now everybody wants them.

  Here in camp the Amerasian children have become like mothers and fathers instead of children. They tell the family what to do, and anything they want you must give them because they say if not for them you could not go to America. If you have a hundred Amerasians, ninety-five think like that.

  When I was in Vietnam, I wanted to go to America very much. But now that I’m here, and my daughter is giving me so much trouble, I’m sorry that I came. I think it would have been better for me to stay in Vietnam and my daughter to go to America by herself. I’m afraid she will give me more trouble when I get to the United States. You know, she tells everybody that when we are called to go to America, if she doesn’t want to go with me, she will cut my name [by claiming that I am not her real mother], and I will have to stay here forever. I hope that’s true, because I don’t want to go with her anymore, she gives me trouble. [Anh’s voice is breaking.] You know one time, she got angry, and she took a knife to my little daughter, and she said she would cut off her head. Now Linh lives in another billet, she doesn’t stay here anymore.

  She is very lazy. Three of my other children are in school here, and they are learning fast, faster than me. But Linh, she always goes to school late and leaves early. In one week she might be absent two times. She doesn’t want to do anything, but she likes to spend a lot of money. I know that in America, she will come and ask for money, and if I don’t have, she will give me trouble.

  Ironically, Linh enters the billet just as Anh is speaking about h
er. The two converse briefly in Vietnamese, and Linh leaves almost immediately. Anh obviously upset, continues speaking, her voice tinged with resentment:

  She went to play cards. She asked me for money, “Give me some money, give me some money,” and she went to play cards. You know my country is very poor. I didn’t have enough for my family . . . but she always spends money on coffee shop and cards, and I don’t know what. I don’t love her anymore. I don’t want to stay in the house with her anymore.

  Postscript: Anh and her family resettled in San Jose, California, in April of 1991. They were sponsored by a boyhood friend of Anh’s husband, who had himself resettled in America several years earlier.

  In June, I received a letter. Anh and her daughter Linh continued to quarrel. Relations soured between Anh’s family and their sponsor, and the family left his home and rented a small house. Linh remained in the sponsor’s home.

  De

  “I had put away lots of gold from my more successful days.”

  Even in the crowded, bedraggled atmosphere of the refugee camp billets, De exudes an aura of sophistication. Poised and self-confident, she has been able to ride out the difficulties with relative aplomb. Unlike the majority of women who mothered Amerasian babies, De was able to put away a healthy stash of gold to tide her through the rough times after the fall of South Vietnam.